I've wondered about Rodin's famous sculpture. Is he engaged in deep thought or sitting around wasting time? And why isn't he wearing pants? I ask the same of myself. Here we comment on well, mostly politics. Or we may just sit! If you like it, tell a friend. If not, tell us, but please read the GROUND RULES before you do.

Saturday, December 03, 2011

The human race must colonize space within the next two centuries or it will become extinct, Stephen Hawking warned today.

The renowned astrophysicist said he fears mankind is in great danger and its future "must be in space" if it is to survive.

In an interview with website Big Think he said threats to the existence of the human race such as the 1963 Cuban missile crisis are likely to increase in the future and plans to handle them must be put in place now.

"We shall need great care and judgment to negotiate them all successfully," he told Big Think.

"But I'm an optimist. If we can avoid disaster for the next two centuries, our species should be safe, as we spread into space."

In the meantime, behold this magnificent Martian sunset, in true colors. It seems almost a shame to despoil this cosmic landscape with the golden arches and all the signs of our conspicuous consumption.

NASA: “Sunset on Mars — Sunset colors on Mars appear opposite of those typically seen on Earth. The central blue glow is caused by the Martian atmosphere scattering the sunlight, the same phenomenon that makes the Earth’s sky blue. Powdery dust suspended in the atmosphere gives the rest of the sky a copper color. The Sun appears only about two-thirds the size that it appears on the Earth.”

Thursday, December 01, 2011

Here's the usually milquetoasty Chris Matthews channeling his inner EXORCIST to do battle with LUCIFER himself, in Chris's mind, Newt Gingrich:

Here Ron Paul enlists the help of Hardball regulars Dana Milbank and Joan Walsh to contribute to this devastating STOP NEWT! ad, making the wingnuts apoplectic ... only in a Ron Paul ad would Big Eddie and Rush The Pigman be on the same side of an issue:

When the Occupy Wall Street movement first emerged, I opined in this blog that it is the most important story of this year and next. I noted that Keith Olbermann, now a truly independent source of news at CURRENT, jumped right in with COUNTDOWN to provide the best, and most extensive coverage of the incipient movement. It has continued as the best — not to say that Big Eddie, Rachel and Lawrence haven't provided good coverage — most comprehensive TV coverage of OWS. And this is where a truly independent network/program, CURRENT and COUNTDOWN, become so important to the public dissemination of unfiltered news and information.

The internet is the interactive alternative to bad TV news. Depending on the user's choices, it can provide very good, or very bad, information. But it's no match for the visual impact and immediacy of television, from which most Americans still get their news. Hence the inordinate influence of Fox disinformation compared with its total numbers. What goes out at Fox is quickly disseminated to its online and radio web of right wing propaganda to blanket American news consumers with lies.

Similarly, there is no match for the Fox disinformation blitz in the mainstream media. In fact, given their for-profit corporate model, they are being dragged down the Fox black hole of disinformation — see MSNBC (more on this in upcoming posts) — rather than providing an effective countervailing source of correct(ed) truthful information. The MSM's compulsive pressure to provide both sides of the story, 50-50, even though the other side is a pack of lies, compels MSNBC's Chris Jansing — whose apologia for being among liberals and progressives is "to keep my head down and work hard"— to run the FULL video of Michele Bachmann's ignorant comment re: the storming of the British Embassy in Teheran that "we (the U.S.) wouldn’t have an embassy in Iran. I wouldn’t allow that to be there" ... (stupid wingnut ... we haven't had one since 1979!), and then report the Bachmann campaign's ABSURD response that she had been "quoted out of context." MSNBC is no longer a credible source of news and progressive commentary; it has become a political theater of the absurd.

Which is why Keith's work at CURRENT and his incredible coverage of OWS is so noteworthy. Again, not to take anything away from Rachel and Big Eddie — they're islands of progressive sanity, but they work for a network that is lurching by leaps and bounds, to quote John McCain ironically, over to "the dark side." Now that his daughter Meghan is an MSNBC employee, her dad is freer than ever to become the partisan right wing hypocrite of his latest incarnation. I wonder if he'll land on PSYCHO TALK for insulting Long Island, NY, then doubling down on NY Senator Chuck Schumer with a faux apology, which was even more despicable. Not with his ditzy daughter hanging around with her valley girl "New Hamp-SHAR" diction, I'll bet.

It's been refreshing to watch COUNTDOWN with Keith hosting a plethora of OWS guests — activists, academics, artists, teachers, REAL alternative media journalists — who are effectively outside the MSM grid but very much connected in every way, speaking with such true insight, idealism, intelligence, and passion. It's a perspective that exists nowhere else in our corporate-dominated media. We have Keith — and Al Gore — to thank for it. Can't wait for the debut of the Young Turks.

Special GOP Agent in not-so-deep cover among the SAPS at MSNBC showed exactly why he is such a valuable Republican asset, rendering Martin Bashir speechless: In an appearance with Martin to discuss Herman Cain's libidinous campaign meltdown, the latest revelation a 13-year affair with yet another woman, Steele artfully turned the conversation around to a smear of Democrats and, by extension his interrogators (Chris, Martin) whom he holds in obvious contempt. First, Michael pedantically noted that in "other countries" — at which Bashir interjected, was Steele taking a shot at Martin's "British roots?"... "No no NOOOooo/yesyesSI" ... replied the GOP mole, proceeding to do just that. You see, while we take a "puritanical" approach, explained Dr. Steele, other countries have a more "laissez-faire" attitude toward politicians' sexual foibles.

Then, as Martin mulled whether he'd just been insulted, Michael pivoted to a highly selective revisionism of sex scandals between party lines, ALL Democratic, that the scrutiny (or intolerance level) today is presumably higher than for JFK and Clinton, or Gary Hart (although Hart got caught), or even the use of new technology, as "Mr. Weiner" found out. So in one sentence, Steele managed to SMEAR the Democratic Party generationally in the sex scandal department, in a conversation about the sexual escapades of Herman Cain, who is teetering and has ceded frontrunner status to yet another GOP sexual miscreant, Newt Gingrich. Steele made no coherent sense, but we came away with "JFK," "Clinton," "Hart," and "Weiner."

BRILLIANT. Gotta hand it to Steele. The man is a partisan propagandizing pro. A liar and nonpareil sophist extraordinaire. He's a viper among so many MSNBC sheeples. How's your little "new Republican friend" working out for ya, Rachel? Only saying because I suspect it was on your recommend MSNBC hired this trainwreck (for the President, Democrats), being paid WELL by MSNBC to use his compensated air time to defeat Democrats in November. So far his strategy is working out well, considering he's surrounded by brain-dead suits and thrust-upon hosts who have their orders to play nice with him.

Why do I keep seeing the invisible corporate hand and Marbles Mouth's meddling in the homogeneization of what's left of MSNBC's progressive message? Steele's mission at MSNBC is simple and clear. It's straight from the Gingrich playbook, actually, and it aims to plant the false equivalence in viewers' minds regarding the GOP's filthy politics of racism, lies, misinformation, obstructionism — and their deviant sex scandals — to say Democrats do the same things (THE BIG LIE), without a shred of supporting evidence. The format suits Steele well, because he's trained to filibuster while injecting the names (JFK — a dig at Chris — Clinton, Hart, and Weiner) that are the only things people remember from his otherwise mindless blabberings. He's even turned Sweet Melissa into a brain-addled academic, and plays "en guarde" with Rachel while Steele is the only one wielding the sword, virtual though it may be.

FYI, MSNBC sheeples, this may help defray Michael's sabotage of the few remaining MSNBC progressives; note, this chart covers ONLY 2006-2009 ... Herman Cain not included:

PS - Hmm ... Between Meghan McCain, the latest Republican MSNBC hire to brainwash the 18-to-35 demographic, and Michael Steele, a surprisingly skilled GOP political operator and, most important, rhetorician, it seems MSNBC's corporate LORDS have most of their programming covered by the Beltway Media, Idiot Punditocracy, wingnut pundit-interlopers, except for the LITTLE FOUR: The Rev, Big Eddie, Rachel and Lawrence. They're all under siege. Considering an opt-out.

My internet service was down for a couple of days ... but I'm back up! So here goes:

JONATHAN CAPEHART, on Barney Frank’s retirement: “For a lot of folks on the left, he’s brilliant.” Oh, Jonathan, can you tell us what he is to a lot of folks on the IDIOT PUNDITOCRACY? I gotta say, Jonathan, this one almost caps your little “amusing” zinger hurled at the GREAT independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont after his marathon filibuster on the Senate floor, an appeal to America's conscience to think on economic justice and income disparity before OWS was fashionable. Jonathan, if you own some regular work clothes, non-designer triple $$$ figure jeans, and sneakers/not hush puppies, check out an Occupy Wall Street demonstration sometime. You might learn something, though I doubt it ...

GQ This ... How would a shitty, skittish, shallow rag, "influential" among metrasexual narcissists, and boasting fewer "scoops" than the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer, try to boost circulation? If you're GQ, the self-styled Gentlemen's Quarterly probably avidly read by Jonathan Capehart, the answer is to project a specious list of so-called "25 least influential people," President Obama being #25, our buddy Big Eddie coming in at #3, and predictably, the hapless Tim Pawlenty #1, perhaps because Lawrence spent most of his "expert" capital promoting that yawning loser. Suffice it to say that the wingnuts went orgasmic over such nonsense. Shooting spitballs at the "fat redhead" (Big Eddie's self-deprecating descriptor) is a sure sign he's scalping psycho wingnuts on a consistent basis. And a certain competitor who likes to wear tight little black T-shirts and blue bullet-proof vests to match his eyes.

GQ is notable for being "closely associated with metrasexuality" — a term coined by Mark Simpson of the British tabloid Independent about his visit to a GQ exhibit in London, of which he wrote: "The promotion of metrasexuality was left to the men's style press, magazines such as GQ [etc.], the new media which took off in the Eighties and is still growing.... They filled their magazines with images of narcissistic young men sporting fashionable clothes and accessories. And they persuaded other young men to study them with a mixture of envy and desire." — and silly, inconsequential lists.

Quote of The Day: Dana Milbank, on the rise of Newt Gingrich, Willard Romney's serial flip-flops, and new allegations of a 13-year illicit (marriage vows-wise, but consensual!) affair between Ladies Man Herman Cain and some other woman (losing count): "The Republican primary process has become some sort of mass suicide."